Collier land preservation group urged to plow ahead

Photos of wildlife caught by remote cameras on Pepper Ranch property in Immokalee. Collier County Conservation Collier Program

NAPLES - Backers of Collier County's land preservation program made their pitch Monday night to keep the program in the land-buying business.

A money crunch prompted Conservation Collier to stop buying land in 2011. County commissioners have talked about dismantling the citizens committee that has overseen the program.

The tax that pays for Conservation Collier expired last year and the program is wrangling with how to pay to manage its preserves and provide public access.

The citizens committee met Monday night to wrangle with its finances and take public comment on the program amid calls for a new Conservation Collier tax.

"We keep saying in this community that this is paradise and we don't want to be like the east coast (of Florida) and I think you and land acquisition is what makes the difference," North Naples resident Michael Seef told the committee. "To say we can't afford it is bogus."

Since voters overwhelmingly approved Conservation Collier in 2002, the program has spent $104 million to create 19 preserves totaling more than 4,000 acres.

Critics maintain the program overpaid when it spent $32 million in 2009 to buy the 2,500-acre Pepper Ranch Preserve in Immokalee.

The economic collapse cut the program's income at about the same time it was struggling to sock away enough money to manage its preserves.

Conservation Collier has $37 million in the bank but has had to pare back its public access and management budget to keep from spending it too quickly.

Backers of the program insist the money crunch isn't a crisis.

"I've never agreed with the math on that one," said Naples landscape architect Ellin Goetz, who helped lead the charge to create the program in 2002.